Abby Bock

If 7th grade students were in charge of designing a new school system, I can envision them altering many things about the current system we use. The first thing that comes to mind is the time of day school begins and ends, as well as more vacation days. I can also see students wanting to have more choices in their education, such as, picking what kind of classes they take, who their teachers are, and where their learning takes place. I, currently, see students thrive a lot when they are assigned a project with unlimited options and creativity; I am betting such learning opportunities would be included in their design.

Thanks for sharing Abby! I completely forgot to consider the time school starts and ends. Do you think they would rather start later, leave earlier, or a combination of both? I wholeheartedly agree with you in regard to students desiring many options and choices in their education. In contrast however, sometimes it seems as though they struggle with ambiguity when we do give them many choices. Students will often ask me, "Well I can write about anything I want. I don't know what to do," or "The teacher didn't tell me what to do!" These comments are actually some of the same thoughts I had when I started this course. I initially was nervous and fearful that expectations would not be outline enough and ambiguity can be difficult for me as well.

Scott,
The questions you mentioned were actually on my mind when I wrote my post. My answer to your comment about what time students might want school to start is, "It depends on the student." =) I can foresee my students, who are motivated and strive to learn, wanting school to start earlier and end earlier, while those who struggle with school would want it to start later and still end earlier. In regards to your comment about students having choice, this does raise many concerns with me as well. One content area at our school is completely designed to allow students to create their own projects, so they are fully responsible for what they learn and how they learn it. I have observed this class before and it honestly doesn't run as smoothly as one might hope. Many students are lost and don't know where to begin, causing them to also be a management issue. So, I think if student choice is going to be the way of the future, a lot of thought and design will be needed to make the system run smoothly.
Thank you for sharing!

Abby-

I completely agree that students thrive when they are given many possibilities or options on a project based assignment.  And your point about different vacation days is something that I had not thought about.  I wonder if students would prefer a shorter summer vacation and more 1 week vacation breaks throughout the school year?